I love katakana, mostly because of how the characters look. But I am constantly baffled by why certain loan words from English are constructed using certain katakana sounds.
For example, if someone ...

Last night I had dinner in a ramen restaurant in northern Japan and was surprised to read the katakana "ライス" (raisu) on the menu. This is obviously the English word "rice" borrowed. But what kind of ...

I know of four countries with a specific kanji besides Japan: China, the Netherlands, the USA and UK. The last two must be quite recent (I presume 19th century) but I wonder on the details and context ...

I know plenty of Japanese words that came from English and a few from other European languages (obviously tons from Chinese), but what about words from Japan's indigenous languages such as Ainu? Also ...

Why is "Xy" pronounced as "[Ki Shi]{キ シ}" in [Xylitol]{キシリトール}?
I believe "Xy" can pronounced as "Zai", which is probably a valid sound in Japanese.
I would like to know its etymology too, if there ...

ユーザ or ユーザー, which is more in use or is there no difference?
I see both of them in use, but is there one that is more correct than the other or is at least the prevailing standard?
a similar word is ...

Recently a friend of mine threw the term 意味くじピーマン (imi kuji pi-man) into a story she was telling, and it totally threw me off. At first I thought, because I wasn't sure how to parse the くじ part, it ...

Sitting in a restaurant yesterday I saw a sign advertising a mango flavoured bagel. It was described as トロピカルな味.
That just got me wondering... whenever a 外来語【がいらいご】(word taken from a foreign language ...

When Japanese incorporates a Western word, especially English, often the spelling rather than the pronunciation is respected in the transcription, thus, ending up with a transcription that is not the ...

I've just found out that there's a couple of words for milk, and that they have slightly different meanings. Which one would I have with my Weetbix in a "viking style" breakfast in Niseko?
Based on ...

I often get text messages from people who use the twitter-derived slang 「なう」 to mean "now." As in 「電車なう」meaning "(I am on the) train now."
However, these mainly come from women, and one gay dude. Is ...

What changes are usually made to the pronounciation of gairaigo?
I notice that vowels are often added between multiple consonants and to the end of words (eg "programmer" => "puroguramaa" (プログラマー)), ...

I'm wondering what the reason for the mispronunciation of 円 in English came to be "yen". I can understand how some words like 東京 became "Tokyo", but "en" to "yen" seems strange. On a side note, why is ...

Does ガールフレンド have a meaning of a female friend (like girl friend), or a female romantic partner?
Someone told me it had the former meaning, and I should use "彼女" for a romantic partner. However, the ...

A few questions about these words. The words [蹴球]{しゅうきゅう}, [籠球]{ろうきゅう}, and [庭球]{ていきゅう} mean football, basketball, and tennis, respectively. But I have only seen them in a dictionary, and in practice ...

Has any Australian English become incorporated into Japanese as gairaigo? Or would most Japanese people only be exposed to Australian English from Australian-made shows such as "The Crocodile Hunter"?
...

This is my current understanding of gemination (促音, /Q/, small っ): in native Japanese words, only the following sounds can be geminated: /k/, /s/, /t/, /p/. Additionally, in loanwords we can geminate ...

I've just started, and everything says learn your hiragana and katakana first.
The hiragana, very clear. I guess you can say an awful lot of things in Japanese with hiragana. But everything I've been ...

I was in Bikku Camera earlier today, and I wanted to buy a small kitchen scale for measuring small amounts of food.
I looked up the word "scale" in the dictionary, and it said 衡器{こうき}. So I found a ...

I know Wine is written as ワイン. I've also seen Whiskey as ウィスキー. In both english words, the 'w' sound are relatively similar (although slightly different).
I'm assuming ウァ would be somewhat like ワ.
But ...

I noticed that some (most? all?) words that were borrowed from English and end with -er in English can have either short or long vowel at the end:
browser - can be ブラウザ or ブラウザー
driver - can be ドライバ ...

I was trying to see how much of the writing on the signs in the park I could make sense of today and found something of interest.
A sign stating what not to do in the park covered not littering and ...

I've been told several times that things like class and classmate don't have non-loan words (I don't know what those are called) associated with them in Japanese. This seems ludicrous to me, as the ...

There appears to be some disagreement/confusion about the precise meaning of セレブ - some dictionaries claim that セレブ means the same thing as English "celebrity", while others claim that it just means ...